Microsoft is preparing to ship its Windows Phone 8.1 update with two significant changes: a notification center and a Siri-like personal assistant. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed to The Verge that the company is currently beta testing copies of Windows Phone 8.1 internally, with plans to fully detail its features at BUILD 2014 in April. A highly requested notification center feature will be added to the software, and we're told it's enabled by swiping down from the top of the screen in a similar way to iOS and Android.

I think with the accents thing, is that they don't want to invest the money for a Scottish version of Siri since it is only a small number of their global customer base that would have this problem.

I am sure if you trained (I have no idea how the voice matching algorithm works, so please correct me if I am completely clueless) the algorithm with my voice and then it tried with an American accent it would just have as many troubles.

Siri is very good at understanding words it knows, like commands and common parameters like numbers and days, but is has trouble with the rest. Ask for Michael Jordan, no problem, but say Lucas Maximus and well, I'll just try it. Oh, it did get it right at once.